I'm Not Good At Small Talk; I'm

Then The Children Went To Bed, Or At Least Went Upstairs, And The Men Joined The Women For A Cigarette On The Porch, Absently Picking Ticks Engorged Like Grapes Off The Sleeping Dogs. And When The Men Kissed The Women Good Night, And Their Weekend Whiskers Scratched The Women's Cheeks, The Women Did Not Think Shave, They Thought Stay.

Wear Your Heart On The Page, And People Will Read To Find Out How You Solved Being Alive.

I Could Claim Any Number Of High-flown Reasons For Writing, Just As You Can Explain Certain Dogs Behavior... But Maybe, It’s That They’re Dog, And That’s What Dogs Do.

I Started Writing By Doing Small Related Things But Not The Thing Itself, Circling It And Getting Closer. I Had No Idea How To Write Fiction. So I Did Journalism Because There Were Rules I Could Learn. You Can Teach Someone To Write A News Story. They Might Not Write A Great One, But You Can Teach That Pretty Easily.

It Was Like That Class At School Where The Teacher Talks About Realization, About How You Could Realize Something Big In A Commonplace Thing. The Example He Gave--and The Liar Said It Really Happened--was That Once While Drinking Orange Juice, He'd Realized He Would Be Dead Someday. He Wondered If We, His Students, Had Had Similar 'realizations.' Is He Kidding? I Thought. Once I Cashed A Paycheck And I Realized It Wasn't Enough. Once I Had Food Poisoning, And Realized I Was Trapped Inside My Body.